Halloween and the licence to be anyone

This past Sunday, I stepped out from my home to make a quick errand about 10 blocks away. It’s New York City, so I walk everywhere feasible within a mile and a half radius. For a Sunday afternoon, the streets just off my neighbourhood were crowded with an extraordinary number of people, mostly kids and teenagers, dressed up in Halloween costumes. An angel ambled by me whose furry white wings I swayed to dodge. I saw a little Dorothy straight from Oz, her blue chequered dress and glittery red shoes bringing an irresistible smile to my face. I saw a teenager walk out of a store in Marilyn Monroe’s white halter dress.

I haven’t celebrated Halloween in years, but as a child I loved thinking weeks in advance about my possible costume, if my mother would oblige. The one I recall being most enamoured with was Wonder Woman. I was in awe of her strength, how fast she could run — and those accessories! As a seven or eight-year-old, I used to dream about having a magic golden lasso that, more than evoking the truth from people, would make anyone I wanted do whatever I commanded.

Halloween has a fascinating history rooted in the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, a celebration of the end of the growing season. Now, with trick-or-treating and the costume industry, the celebration is more about play and commerce than anything else. But I think children, younger and older, love costumes because they offer a safe and shortlived opportunity to role-play a character they admire in some way. At least in America, where kids seem to select a range of costumes beyond the traditional ghosts and witches.

I’m drawn to the simple but layered images of the Polish contemporary artist Katarzyna Karpowicz. Her delicately drawn, painted and richly coloured work reflects layers of the human condition, with a soft dreamlike quality. Her painting “Kids and Masks I” shows a roomful of children all wearing masks at what could be a costume party or a school event. The kids are clustered around a maskless little girl in a yellow sweater whose back is turned towards us. The children closest to her are making gestures of welcome and, directly facing her, another child holds an extra mask in his hand, as though the opportunity awaits her to join them in their world of make-believe.

Costumes can also allow children to believe that for a brief time they are more special than they normally imagine themselves to be

What we see feels like a metaphor for what children should be doing at that stage of life: trying on different personas and figuring out through play and imagination who they might become. I wonder if, for kids, costumes can provide a level of comfort, as they’re still learning how to be comfortable in their own skins, with all the peer pressure of conformity. I think costumes can also allow children to believe that for a brief time they are more special than they normally imagine themselves to be.

That’s probably why my nephew spent the better half of the year when he was seven living in his Spider-Man costume. When his costume was in the wash or just not appropriate for the setting, it often led to an emotional meltdown, the only way for a child to process their frustration at being denied what feels absolutely essential to them. I wonder if people really do ever grow out of that feeling of wanting to be, needing to be someone else for a while. Or if adults just learn to quiet the urges, and to constrict the imagination.

The Belgian surrealist René Magritte’s 1937 painting, “La Reproduction Interdite” (Not to Be Reproduced), makes me consider ways our own perceptions of ourselves might be challenged. It was a portrait commissioned by the wealthy British poet and art patron Edward James. Magritte depicts James in a basic dark jacket with a basic white collared shirt, and a basic haircut with every hair in place, looking into a gold-framed mirror set on a mantlepiece. There’s an old copy of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket lying on the mantel, the only novel ever published by the writer.

In the glass, we can see the mirrored reflection of the book’s cover. But rather than seeing James’s face staring into the glass, we see the back of his head instead. We are denied access to the individual’s identity. When I look at this work, I can’t help wondering whether, if any of us were the subject of the painting, would our faces also be hidden from us? Would we only be able to see our own backs in the reflection, because as adults we are no longer in the habit of imagining possibilities of who we could still be, because we may no longer have any creative vision for the future?

It sounds dramatic, but I think it’s a version of an experience many adults have. Having reached a certain age or place in life, in work or relationships, it feels unrealistic to have imaginings of the person you could yet become. We stop playing metaphorical dress-up, stop trying on possibilities. We think it’s childish. But is it? Aren’t there still traits or characteristics of people we admire? Aspects of lives we imagine might transform us if we could only try them out?

The 30-year-old South African multidisciplinary artist Manyaku Mashilo makes ethereal and mesmerising paper-based work that speaks beautifully to the complexity of human identity. Based in Cape Town, Mashilo depicts friends, family and members of her community in medium to large-scale works that blend elements of portraiture, collage, mark-making and cartography. There is a sense in much of her work that the subjects are simultaneously living between realms of the past, present and future, in conversation with not only ancestors but with their future selves, who they might yet be.

In her 2020-21 piece “We are Going to See the Future First”, Mashilo places a mirror image of the head and shoulders of a young black girl at the front of the canvas. Behind her, a community of people all dressed in white are journeying towards the viewer in the midst of what looks like the rituals of a baptism or blessing. On the girl’s upper body, a parade of minute people travels away from her. In the centre of the canvas, there is an arched doorway leading into a black abyss of night. A young child skips into the darkness, arms raised as if in joyful play. The background of the canvas is a swirling, seeping blend of warm burnt sienna and copper. Shimmering dots and large circles of iridescent white overlay the reflected face.

As adults, we don’t need real costumes but rather what costumes symbolise: an active imagination

Whoever we are in the foreground of our lives, at any given point in our lives, is a mapped composition of people from our families and communities, from the lineage of our cultures and traditions, and from the practices and rituals we’ve used to ground ourselves. But, like the child in the centre of it all running forward into the darkness, there is always more to move towards, to aspire towards, to become, if we can imagine it.

As adults, we don’t need real costumes but rather what costumes symbolise: an active imagination about who it is still possible for us to become, emotionally, spiritually, intellectually and vocationally. The darkness in this painting is not foreboding or bad. There’s a bright shining moon, and the child goes willingly.

Email Enuma at [email protected]

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